Current Analysis Letter to Bernie, II Dear Sen. Sanders, I’m a contributor to your campaign and enthusiastically support your bold, relentless critique of the billionaire class that is undermining democracy and making a decent life impossible for millions of people. I’d like you to speak more about how big money has been a destructive Joel Beinin • 4 min read
Current Analysis Letter to Bernie Dear Sen. Sanders, Congratulations on your strong showing in Iowa and your victory in New Hampshire. It’s exciting to see Democratic primary voters—especially younger ones—choosing your program of social democracy over the unfettered liberal capitalism to which they’ve always been told there’s no The Editors • 4 min read
Current Analysis Have Yourself Some Anti-Refugee Hysteria As holiday shoppers empty their wallets to buy presents for family and friends, there’s been an outbreak of miserliness among our politicians—directed at some of the world’s most helpless people. At least 30 Republican governors, and one Democrat, are vowing to bar Syrian refugees from their states Chris Toensing • 2 min read
Current Analysis Ahmed Mohamed, Liberal Rhetoric and Obama Administration Propaganda Most readers will know by now that a 14-year-old kid named Ahmed Mohamed was recently arrested in Irving, Texas [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/us/texas-student-is-under-police-investigation-for-building-a-clock.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=2] for, well, for making a clock while Muslim. Ahme Leili Kashani • 6 min read
Current Analysis We Can—and Should—Do More to Help Syrian Refugees Imagine that 58 million Americans were streaming into Canada and Mexico, many with only a small satchel and the clothes on their backs. Picture another 102 million residents of the Eastern seaboard seeking refuge with relatives in the Midwest and West. That terrifying mental exercise gives a sense Chris Toensing • 2 min read
Current Analysis An Extraordinary Feat of Diplomacy The nuclear agreement with Iran is an extraordinary feat of diplomacy. First and foremost, non-proliferation experts agree that the deal blocks all of the routes to making an atomic bomb. There are provisions for rigorous inspections—so if Iran cheats, the world will know. Second, it isn’t just Wa Chris Toensing • 2 min read
MER Article Slahi, Guantanamo Diary Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantánamo Diary is a powerful indictment of the cruel regime of torture at the heart of darkness that is the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay. Lisa Hajjar • 4 min read
MER Article Migrant Workers and the US Military in the Middle East Over the past 15 years, the United States has waged two major land wars in the greater Middle East with hundreds of thousands of ground troops. Shadowing these armies and rivaling them in size has been a labor force of private contractors. The security company once called Blackwater has played an ou Darryl Li • 14 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Summer 2015) No publication based in Washington should write about prisons without first noting that America leads the world in incarceration. Amanda Ufheil-Somers, Chris Toensing • 9 min read
Current Analysis Breaking Even, Breaking Down or Going for Broke? As of mid-May 2015, crude oil prices had fallen to the lowest level in recent years, under $60 a barrel for US domestic benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and about $66 a barrel for the international Brent benchmark [http://www.oil-price.net/]. These market prices are compared to several types Karen Pfeifer • 6 min read
Current Analysis Repression and Remembering in Kent and Cairo Yesterday was the forty-fifth anniversary of the day [http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/05/45th_anniversary_of_kent_state.html] when Ohio National Guardsmen fired 67 rounds of live ammunition into a crowd of peaceful protesters at Kent State University. The crime took 13 seconds. The tra Joshua Stacher • 3 min read
MER Article The Yemeni UFW Martyr In the summer of 2014, director Diego Luna released Cesar Chavez, a feature-length retelling of the story of the 1973 grape pickers’ strike in California that inspired an international grape boycott and made Cesar Chavez a household name. In the film, the first person killed on a farm worker picket Nadine Naber • 3 min read
